The World Can’t Compare…
by Ovo
Summary: Neil loves Jane. Jane loves Neil. Jane also loves Ryan. Neil doesn't know what to think about that, so he decides that keeping a low profile is in order... A slightly unusual romance.
1. Chapter One

The World Can't Compare…  
**Chapter One **

It was warm, as it usually was; however, it wasn't uncomfortably so. Just like always.

It was enough for the young woman to walk barefoot over the metal ramparts with no trouble. The barriers provided equilibrium now found nowhere else on the planet. It provided safety, even to the smallest creatures that didn't know how, just that it did. To some, they merely afforded a kind of temporary safe haven from the struggle fought daily in an attempt to gain – or at least hold – some bit of ground in the seemingly everlasting war against the Phantoms.

Likened to these ones. As the two strolled side by side, the one overshadowing his companion kept a protective arm around the woman's shoulders. It was the gesture that was important, for there was truly no need; but it provided an offer of comfort and security – of love. It was the love that was important.

They stopped outside of the little restaurant on the apex of one of the city's peripheral civs' side streets. It was farther away from the New York Military Base than they would have gone on a regular basis, and far from the more crowded districts. It was the perfectly quaint and friendly nature that would draw them there on occasion, just for the hell of it.

A small fence surrounded the terrace in front of the door, and within the enclosure patio tables attempted to imitate an age gone by but not forgotten; it was here, outside the archaic-styled gate, that they stopped. The man leaned to kiss this woman, the one he loved, and he glanced over her shoulder as he slowly to his proper height.

His expression changed to something more worried, but he smiled down at her. She knew what that meant; who needed words? With a quick pat on her shoulder, he disappeared into the establishment, leaving her to deal with the one trailing them.

"Damnit, Neil," she addressed the one trailing, a slight annoyance tinting her voice to add demand, "Stop pouting."

"I'm _not_ pouting," the man insisted, and approached the woman cautiously, as though the world would come crashing down if he didn't.

"Yes, you are," he couldn't cover it well enough, because she could hear it in his voice.

"Janie…"

She could see him on the edge of her sight. If he wasn't coming any closer, she'd have to take the initiative. So she turned to him, and he shrunk back slightly.

"You know you don't have to hang back like that," she chided.

"I know," and he acknowledged.

"You know," she answered, closer to him. Her arms wrapped around his body and he gratefully returned the embrace. Still, he was tense, "So what's wrong?"

"People…" he scarcely breathed as he lost himself in the moment. Just as she'd explained time and again how important it could be to do so.

"Aw, Christ, Neil…" she hummed wearily. If this didn't come up and again, life would have been a much happier time, "Forget 'em."

He did, as she kissed him and he melted into a puddle of happiness. At least until he took notice of her bare feet.

"Why'd y'do that?" he mumbled, staring down and nudging her toes with his boot. When he looked up, she was smiling at him.

"It feels nice," she replied under eye-contact, "You should try it sometime…."

"Ready, whenever you two are done,"

There was no rush, and no condescending tone. A patient acceptance as the other man returned from his task, to announce. He smiled at his friends, as much care shown for one as for the other.

Neil stole a kiss before Jane fully moved back to the Ryan's side. The technician stayed a bit closer this time, trying for the sake of devotion to ignore outwards doubt.

"Food?" Ryan asked, nodding to the door. Jane nodded under his arm, and smiled.

"Food is good," she agreed, leaning into him. As an afterthought, she reached for Neil and pulled him into the close embrace.

She was proud of him when he didn't fight it. After all was said and done – love was something to be shared, and not hoarded.


	2. Paranoid Delusions

_The World Can't Compare..._  
**_Paranoid Delusions_**

It had been one of the slow days. In part the reason for the expedition. The other part had something to do with a cure for depression… or something like that. Neil hadn't paid much attention until he found himself inexplicably carried out the door.

A fearful experience, notably because he was under the perpetual paranoia that Ryan was out for his blood.

Not that there was any evidence for that, but Neil wouldn't blame the sergeant; he'd been there first, after all. Regardless, The technician had no plans of 'disappearing,' or having any kind of 'accident' any time soon, and for that he felt the need to keep on his feet.

Though, as it was, Ryan was occupied. So was Jane. Which left Neil watching absently from the other side of the little table.

So instead of relaxing in a brief reprieve, his mind wandered back to the day his eyes had opened to meet another's, also slightly startled, but not in the same manner as his…

"Good morning," she'd said, confused, but with a still-sleepy hint of amusement in the drawl.

His startled eyes widened, and a fearful whimper passed his throat. This woman, presumably the same one whose hip his hand was resting on, he knew… not well but in a professional fashion; he knew well enough that she was currently involved, deeply as he'd imagined it, with the master sergeant in charge of their unit.

"What are you doing here?"

Jane ignored the fear of his utterance, instead resolved to untangle the mystery in a more thoughtful way than gawking at it senselessly.

"I think the better question is: what are you doing on my rack?"

Neil wasn't sure if he was supposed to ask, or if it was rhetorical. He decided, in the ensuing silence, and as her hand came to rest over his, that it would be better to say _something_.

"What are you doing on my rack?" he managed to choke, not daring to look away as her fingers found their way up his arm.

"_My_ rack, Fleming," Jane corrected, not vehemently, but adamantly, "What are _you_ doing; on _my_ rack?"

Neil fought himself over whether to look or not. He won, and stole a dangerous glance around the room. Fear redoubled its efforts against him – this wasn't his room, and this wasn't familiar. His heart sank as he rolled backward and he fell out from under the blankets and off the bed entirely. And the tiled floor was _cold_.

And his clothes were missing. Jane watched his frantic plight, not without sympathy, and she smirked, "Try under the frame, a lot of shit winds up under there."

He followed her advice, although trying to pretend she wasn't there as he lifted the bedclothes back onto the rack, and found, to his relief, the slate BDUs that somehow managed to get pushed under there. _Somehow_ wasn't accurate – this insinuated that he _didn't_ know. For all practical purposes, he wouldn't allow himself to know in case a certain, normally easy-going sergeant found out about his indiscretion and decided to take his head off as a result… or worse.

That she was petting him over the edge of the bed wasn't helping his already confused moral mindset. He inched backward, mumbling a, _thank you_ and retreating to stand and dress himself on the other side of the room. He didn't get to the latter, as the door opened behind him, and he blindly fled past the man standing on the other side of it.

So he didn't hear Ryan chuckle. Nor did he see Jane's half a smile.

"Aww, Ryan…" she accused, "You scared him away!"

Which had caused the terrible paradox. Sure, if the others had forced him into some bizarre occultic rituals without his consent, he would have had a reason to want to leave… at least under most circumstances he could imagine in that realm.

But _no_, they had to actually _care_. Or Jane did at least. He was pretty sure that Ryan was simply pretending.

And it wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't seemed unnatural… or something…

The baseline fact was that he hadn't figured it out yet. A scientist he knew had marked it as a blatant _wrong_, before they'd stopped talking to one another. That little tiff hadn't really helped his theological reasoning of the problem. And there was still Ryan to worry about.

Neil glanced up from the near static cup of coffee that had slowly come under center of his focus in his contemplation.

Ryan was examining the fingernails of one hand, brutally tearing apart certain offenders with a brutal combination of tooth and nail. Alarmed, Neil whimpered, desperately looking around as he realized Jane was nowhere; she wasn't on the little terrace, or the walkway nearby, nowhere to his view.

Ryan stopped, eyebrows raised, and stared at the pallid younger man with an indecisive combination of, _do you need help, _and _do I pretend not to know you?_ creeping across his face.

The technician ignored the response, and visualized killing the nerves that refused to ease off when he needed them to do so. _Well it's **hard** to act casual around your own potential murderer_, he told himself, forcefully redirecting his attention to the coffee. Because coffee was good…

…unless it'd been poisoned.

Staring into the cup with a new horror, Neil desperately tried to remember what had happened while he was zoned out. Failing miserably, and unable to concentrate on just that, he resigned it to fate; if he'd been poisoned, then at least his last meal had been significantly better than any of the base-side food.

So, he came to a point where he nearly _had_ relaxed, but for a moment of a circumstantial, unexpected catalyst.

He half leapt from the chair, falling heavy against the table. The inoffensive, inanimate white metal molded object might have flipped over him, had Ryan not jumped to hold it down.

"Jumpy today." Jane observed, but whether she was angry, disappointed, happy… happy? Neil couldn't tell. He could only squirm, somehow managing to fall completely in the process and land heavier on the ground than he had on the table.

But she did offer him a hand up… two, actually, along with an accompanying smile.


	3. Little Talks

_The World Can't Compare_  
**_Petty Talks_**

It had been two days, and he was ready to trust coffee again. All the poisons he knew of would have killed him by now, so it didn't matter that he only knew of one.

So it was, when the suggestion for coffee was made, he volunteered for the run.

If he realized his mistake, it was when he passed the archway… when the tray slipped from his hands. It struck the floor flat at about the same time his hands reached his eyes.

---

"He doesn't understand."

Ryan sighed as Jane slid through the door and past him, hastily shrugging on her jacket as she went. The sergeant hadn't been sure of this from the start, and the longer it dragged on the more worried he became. Not that he didn't like Neil… the technician was kind of cute in that neurotic, spazzy sort of way, but….

"Okay, so maybe he understands," he chose to amend his prior statement, "but when it comes to it, something isn't connecting properly."

"He's a little scared," the woman replied, watching Ryan from the corner of her eye. She cared, and it did bother her from time to time, but she didn't know what to do about it. Thus, she let it slide.

"He stood there for ten minutes – _ten_ minutes," he paused to let the emphasis sink in, and to wonder why he bothered since she knew what he meant, and what he was getting at, "with his hands over his eyes."

"So… talk to him."

He often attempted to guess whether that was her conclusion because she didn't want to do so herself, or if she simply didn't know how to start. It was never a conclusive game.

"I have talked to him. Or tried. Every time I get close, he zones out. If we're in the open, he runs away," Ryan watched her reflection in the mirror, and smiled from where she could not see, "I have a novel idea! Since you have nothing better to do during the next twelve hours, how about _you_ try talking to him?"

Jane turned to face him, with an expression that failed to confirm either of his theories, "Maybe I will."

A train of thought interrupted by a swift, though mildly difficult, kiss to the cheek, and Ryan's attention was distractedly following her as she hefted her rifle from its rack and left… though not before checking both ways of the corridor. It was a habit formed after an accident involving some poor soldier getting smacked in the head, and, despite himself, Ryan had to chuckle at the memory, having forgotten his initial attempt at guesswork.

---

Sentry duty was dull, unless one happened to have a friend along. It was in that instance that Jane was fortunate. Or so she had thought. Her attempt at getting Neil to talk had started with great difficulty, and the first two words from his mouth were a meek, _I'm sorry_. Apparently, he was under the impression that she could be angry with him for petty things.

It soon progressed, as Neil reverted to his talkative self, though Jane wasn't sure she liked the direction.

"It just seems unnatural," while there came a certain relief from admitting it, he was grateful, for once, to the regulations surrounding sentry duty. He was quite certain Jane was staring at him by now, and he had a viable reason for not returning the gaze.

"I mean, you know…" no answer, but he didn't really need one, "Why'd there be so many marriages in the past twenty centuries if it were no big deal?"

"I suppose adultery is the natural byproduct, then?" Jane sighed, watching the pair of flat shoes she noticed at a distance some five earlier ago pass by at their leisurely pace. Other than the few people who used the walkway as a shortcut no one came down here at midnight. No one cared. So, without fear of repercussions, she retired guarding for sitting and reflecting… usually. Tonight wasn't going well, "And cancer and acne are the tools of natural selection."

"I don't know," for the first time in three hours, Neil allowed the muscles in his neck to relax, and glanced at the cement below his feet, "I guess it's different, but legs…"

Jane blinked. Even for Neil, that was an odd thing to say. She looked up, and, having been graced with the back of his head, and that partly hidden from her vantage, leaned to peer around his knees. The woman who had just passed by in flat shoes… though, by the specific tone of her quite bare legs suggested she normally wore shoes with longer heels.

"She's pretty," Jane snorted.

"Who?" Neil snapped back in a futile attempt at insincere honesty.

"The girl in the short skirt; why don't you go talk to her?""

The tech glanced again, in part to conceal the warm, overwhelming red that so suddenly overtook his pale face, "No!"

"Fine, then I'll go talk to her," Jane was out of reach before he could properly respond to _that_, but he still tried.

"You can't just leave!"

That stalled her for a few moments, but only long enough for her reply.

"_No one_ is going to try to break into a cryogenics freezer," she paused a second longer to add, "And if they do, you can shoot them."

Dumbstruck, Neil watched in horror as Jane jogged to catch up with the redhead before realizing that watching was probably a bad thing. So he waited, and eternity and a half later, he peeked.

Unfortunately, the woman in beige was looking at him, smiling in a way he didn't want to guess the meaning of. The poor industrial view became his reality once again; he didn't dare blink, especially when he heard the footfalls of his impending demise.

As it turned out, it was only Jane, who offered no explanation as she returned to her patch of the ground.

He was torn by the common sense to not ask and fallible curiosity.

"Well?"

The woman looked up at him and shrugged, "She's as far from your type as they fall."

Neil might have breathed a sigh of relief, but she hadn't finished.

"You're lucky, this time."

For he didn't know whether to be drawn to that sentiment, or very afraid.


End file.
